Microtransactions annoy me, sure. But the season pass, live service, bullshit stuff pisses me off more. It’s just a step towards what I hate about apps on my phone these days. There are so many apps that require a subscription but have no recurring fees or content updates. I’m talking calendar apps, or apps for taking notes, etc.
Ubisoft guy recently implied he wants to take things this direction but it’s not that far off with their games already.
Jestem na wielu ale głównie lokalnych. Świetnie się sprawdza przy małych grupach jako komunikator. Przy dużych giną wątki no i ten spam jest problemem.
If you go by standard inflation, games purchased in 1998 would now cost over $100. And, given reduced visuals, those games needed much fewer people to finish.
Selling games for $100 is one idea, and some publishers have even shifted that way. But, that’s not so fair for low income gamers (especially since even since 1998, the minimum wage hasn’t really gone up).
The solution they came up with is changing the entry fee, and giving semi-pointless extras on top. What I’ve generally seen is that the things games sell within them are in no way “Half the game’s content”; usually things more like skins and cosmetics. Levels, story, and gameplay items are very commonly accessible to everyone. There are expansion packs, just as there were in 1998, that usually represent significant development efforts, new voice acting, and new levels.
Skins are not “nothing”, so I understand the frustration of having them unavailable, compared to old days when they were unlockable by doing a kickflip between the schools in Tony Hawk or something. But in those old days, games effectively cost $100. Which would you prefer?
$100 games. I know I’m the minority in this as I have the income for it, but I subscribe to the “buy once, cry once” mentality where I’d rather pay a large up-front cost for something and just have it be mine with all the bells and whistles it comes with. I detest this nickle and dime bullshit modern gaming has become.
Which is why I’ve also given up on “AAA” games from corporate publishers and stick to indie games from indie developers. I’m sure even if the AAA publishers started charging $100 for games, they’d still nickle and dime you just because they can.
That’s definitely a fair opinion - just unfortunate that enough people wouldn’t agree, or wouldn’t be able to afford $100 games, that that will probably never happen.
The other issue is that developers these days keep working on games after their release - often using information gained related to launch reception.
One other thing I think people forget about older games is that they made a lot of sequels. They have the assets for a mid-sized game and a lot of unused ideas, so to put out more content they remix what they have in new ways for a shorter development cycle. That kind of thing now becomes more suitable for an expansion pack; but whichever way it’s sold, the timeline for its release would never have made it to the first game’s production deadline.
There are a lot of benefits to the sequel model in some circumstances. You get to have every permutation of a game and its versions rather than overwriting previous versions of a game that arguably might be better for their own reasons.
Street Fighter 6 recently came out, to pretty high praise from reviewers and the general public.
The game has a “Year 1 character pass” that adds 4 new characters. Eventually, there will be a year 2 character pass that will add more characters. If you’re not buying these, you’re literally not getting the entire game. When you play online, you will face opponents playing characters that you can’t even play yourself.
There are lots of games that have similar features where not spending the extra cash means you’re literally not getting as much content as everyone else. It’s not just about cosmetics anymore and hasn’t been for years now.
That’s actually a very fair point. I don’t play fighting games, but this is a common theme for many multiplayer games now. A lot of developers have worked to make the newer character options “fair”, but even when they work to balance new with old, just having confusing tactical options that some players can’t play as is enough to mess with someone’s strategic skill development.
So for fighting games, character passes are a good thing(overall).
If you bought SF4 at launch and continued to play the game throughout it’s life, you ended up buying the same game multiple times. This was essentially a few characters and a balance patch(had new mechanics as well). This the fragmented the player base a lot, so if you were playing the base game you couldn’t play with someone on the latest version.
Street Fighter 5 however, switched to character passes and even being able to unlock characters with in-game currency(difficult if you came to the game later but possible). This means everyone got the balance patches and major system updates, so the player base stayed as a single entity.
For a niche genre, this is significantly better than multiple purchases of the same game, and allows for a game to get more updates over a longer time.
However I do wish they kept in more unlockable content like costumes, colours and stages.
Specific to Street Fighter 6 though, they have a battlepass(which is not good, but isn’t terrible either) which the free version gave/gives out a bunch of character rental tokens, so you can play with DLC characters you haven’t purchased.
Lots of the DLC crap was stuff you unlocked by playing in the past. I remember playing DoA 2 and unlocking costumes, DoA 6 has like 2000 bucks worth of DLC costumes or some crap lol
Its more about DLCs, then microtransactions but the two are very similar.
Okay lets say its a Steam Sale and they have publisher highlights. Lets saaay…Ubisoft or EA or one of these big corporate publishers.
Huuuge banners::Sale up-to 85% off
So since I am a patient gamer I start browsing and look at some 8-10 years old AAA titles I didn’t bother to pay full price for at relese. Like some older AC, Ghost Recon, or something for under 10 EUR/USD. Cool, then you click on it and what I see?
THATS ONLY THE FUCKING BASE GAME!?!?!! They still sell 3 premium editions with the DLCs and the one with all the content is something like 25-30 EUR/USD. With 85% off. So the full price is still something like 100+ EUR/USD. Fuck this artificially inflated price, I’m not paying that much for a decade old fucking game.
While other publishers roll all content into a complete edition or even release free remasters with all content included for considerably lower price for their older titles these greedy fuck publishers still trying to sell us exclusive content from a decade ago. Fucking boils my blood.
I can tell you from experience that you'll have a better time with plenty of old Assassin's Creed games by not having the DLC in the picture to affect your opinion of the total package.
One thing that kills me are the “its just cosmetics” fellas. While I agree that is is the least worst option for micro transactions but for most games the drip game is half the game. I want to look cool and I want those looks to represent I did something in game.
Any kind of microtransaction or paid content is a real turn off for me nowadays. I really couldn’t care less about your loot boxes, battle passes and “games as a service” so I will just play something else.
I haven’t bought a game with microtransactions in several years, even if I was interested in the game. I know my resistance probably doesn’t accomplish much, but I simply refuse to support that business model. I don’t want to put up with pressure to pay “just a little bit more”. Day 1 DLC isn’t a guaranteed gamebreaker for me if I already really want the game, but it definitely reduces my interest and I’ve passed over several games before because of it.
I wholeheartedly support expansions so long as their content justifies their pricetag.
I know my resistance probably doesn’t accomplish much
It does. Besides not giving that game your time and money, you're instead putting it in some other game that's making what you want, and they probably need your time and money more to keep doing that.
Thanks to the efforts of those continuing simmaster07’s line of work, namely Null 45 and memo, these sorts of revolutions are about to become more commonplace, bringing with them everything from improved game stability on modern systems, to long-requested new features and quality-of-life (QoL) improvements. Null 45 has already released over a dozen DLL mods on the STEX since November, one of the most recent of which allows more Building Styles. While I can’t reveal too much at this point in time, I will note that DLL files will become important components of major SC4 mods in the very near future. Suffice to say, we’re entering a very exciting time in the SC4 modding community.
Edit: the caveat being, these will only work on the digital release windows version of SC4
I have no problem with developers continuing to create new content and give customers the option to buy it or not.
Loot boxes and gambling stuff and types of micro transactions where you are basically paying a fee to avoid artificial annoyance/grinding are a cancer on the industry.
The best approach is to play games that respect their customers by having no microtransactions, or a fair monetization.
Most games that respect these criteria are indie games. The devs of those games deserve your money more than any AAA company, and their games are often just as fun as those you played when you were younger years ago.
I played CrossCode a few years ago, and it’s been the most fun I’ve had in years. I don’t know about arcade fighting games, but surely there must be an alternative.
My main issue that upsets me (which from what I understand isn’t much of a thing anymore which is good) is on-disk DLC, forcing you to pay extra to unlock content that is already on the disk you already own. Oh, wait, that leads to another annoyance: the idea that you don’t even own the copy of the game you paid for and is in your hands, you just own a license the publisher can change or revoke at any time or else you can’t play anymore.
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